People

Why Ramsay’s kids fly coach

Gordon Ramsay is determined to keep his children grounded, said Emma Cox in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). When the wealthy chef and his family go on holiday, his four kids—Matilda, 15; Jack and Holly, 17; and Megan, 18—go to the back of the plane. “They don’t sit with us in first class,” says Ramsay, 50. “They haven’t worked anywhere near hard enough to afford that. I turn left with Tana [his wife] and they turn right, and I say to the chief stewardess, ‘Make sure those little f---ers don’t come anywhere near us—I want to sleep on this plane.’ I worked my f---ing arse off to sit that close to the pilot.” Ramsay was raised in public housing in Stratford-upon-Avon, and left the family home at 16 to get away from poverty, chaos, and his abusive father. Tana, in contrast, “came from a super setup. So we meet in the middle and the kids bounce off both of us.” Ramsay’s strict approach extends to his $140 million fortune. “It’s definitely not going to them. The only thing I’ve agreed with Tana is they get a 25 percent deposit on a flat. That’s not in a mean way; it’s to not spoil them.”

Brosnan’s family heartache

Pierce Brosnan’s life has been shaped by loss, said Alex Bhattacharji in Esquire. In 1991, the Irish actor lost his first wife, Cassandra, to ovarian cancer. In 2013, his daughter, Charlotte, died from the same disease. Those gut-wrenching losses have left their mark on Brosnan’s worldview. “I do n’t look at the cup as half full, believe me,” he says. “The dark, melancholy Irish black dog sits beside me from time to time.” Brosnan, 63, has a stoic disposition, which is partly a product of his tough Irish upbringing. His father left the family when Brosnan was an infant in a small riverside village. His mother left for London not long after, and Brosnan was sent to live with relatives and later moved to a boardinghouse. “There were two lodgers—workingmen, one in the factory and one in the sawmill. I had a metal bed with a curtain around it. That was my room and my haven and my space.” Brosnan met his father only once, when he was 31 and newly famous, and was filming an episode of his TV show Remington Steele, in Ireland. “I had a Sunday afternoon with him. A story about this and that, had a few pints of Guinness, and we said goodbye,” he says. “I would have loved to have known him. He was a good whistler and we had a good walk…. That’s as much as I know about him.”

Perry’s continuing re-education

Katy Perry still has a lot of catching up to do, said Hamish Bowles in Vogue. The daughter of evangelical Christian pastors, Perry was raised in a “bubble beyond the bubble” in Santa Barbara, Calif., that extended across all parts of her life—including homeschooling. Her real education, she says, “started in my 20s, and there is so much to learn still.” Perry, now 32, wasn’t allowed the same cultural experiences as other teens. “I miss references all the time. We knew about Madonna and Marilyn Manson in my family [only] because we picketed their concerts. My house was church on Sunday morning, church on Sunday night; we watched Bill O’Reilly on TV. That was my whole childhood.” Everything changed when Perry was 15 and discovered the operatic rock music of Queen and its androgynous, sexually charged lead singer Freddie Mercury. “I had never heard such an imaginative explanation of how to live,” she says. “I felt so free and accepted.” The epiphany pushed Perry to flee gospel and Nashville for a pop career in Los Angeles. Today, Perry has agreed to disagree with her parents about religion and politics, but she follows O’Reilly on Twitter. “I want to know what’s going on on the other side,” she explains. “I don’t want to be ignorant.” ■